Three Big Ideas for Post-Smartphone Design, From the Mind Behind Beats by Dre

At a recent design conference, Robert Brunner outlined his ideas for post-smartphone design. Image: Ammunition

One key trend he sees is a return to simpler, single-purpose tools. This internet-connected tape measure is one example. It would work like the analog standby while quietly sending measurements back to your computer. Image: Ammunition

Brunner's team at Ammunition, the design house behind products like Beats by Dre and Nook, also envisioned a smartband. Image: Ammunition

It was devised as a bracelet, not as a replacement for the watch. Image: Ammunition

It includes some novel (if a bit hypothetical) ideas for both input and output. Sensors on the inside of the band could read muscles in the wrist for simple controls. Image: Ammunition

The outside is a screen in its entirety, with a laser-cut material laid over a light to create a sort of dot matrix display. Image: Ammunition

“A watch is something you rotate, you glance at it, and you move on. You do that from 18 to 24 inches away," Brunner says. Image: Ammunition

The lesson is simple: For a smartwatch to succeed, designers need to look at how we use watches just as much as how we use smartphones. Image: Ammunition

Image: Ammunition

Robert Brunner saw the promise of the smartphone before just about anyone else. Or, at least, the promise of something like it. As the founder of Apple’s industrial design group in the ’90s, he oversaw the development of the Newton, one of the first products that tried to tap into the magic of a do-anything device that could fit in your pocket.

As it turned out, the Newton wasn’t exactly a “do-anything” device (or perhaps even a “do anything” device). But it did provide a framework for the multipurpose smartphones we enjoy today. It teased a future of consolidated functionality and ubiquitous connectivity.

The pendulum is swinging away from the Swiss Army Knife mentality of smartphones.

Today those ideas are a reality. And yet, Brunner is growing weary of all our pocket-size screens. As the founder of Ammunition, the design house responsible for products like Beats by Dre and Barnes and Noble’s Nook, he’s been focused on building products that find more subtle ways to delight us.

Brunner spelled out this distinction in his keynote talk at Giga OM’s design conference last month. As he sees it, our immediate juncture comes down to this question: Today’s smartphones can indeed do it all, but how much of it can they do well? As a way of encouraging us to think about those trade-offs, Brunner outlined several ideas he hopes to see shaping product design in years to come.

Smart, specific tools for specific jobs

When Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone, he boasted that it was three devices in one: an iPod, a cell phone, and an “internet communicator” (even then that seemed like an awfully goofy way to put it). We know what happened next. Smartphones subsumed not only phones and MP3 players but point-and-shoot cameras, handheld gaming systems, GPS units and more.

But when you pack all that functionality into one device, something is lost. “To have that ubiquity you give up on some specific attributes of a tool,” Brunner says.

One of those attributes we lose with touch screens is simple tactility. No matter what your smartphone can do, you’re still limited to doing it on a glass screen, and that’s often a compromise. Think of how much more natural it is to hold onto a DSLR and press the plastic shutter button than it is to grip your smartphone and tap the tiny “take a picture” chiclet on-screen. Or to mash on a Gameboy’s d-pad instead of jamming on its pixelated facsimile.

A mock-up of a connected tape measure. Image: Ammunition

Brunner misses those simple tactile delights: the reassuring spring of the shutter button; the satisfying friction of a chunky volume knob; the weighty feel of hammer in hand. That’s one of the reasons he sees the need for a return to simpler, single-purpose tools.

To illustrate the concept, he offered the rough concept of a smart tape measure. “There’s a lot of things I really like about an analog tape measure,” he says. “You can see how big something is; you can see what it’d be like if it was two inches less.” Still, it relies on your eyes and your brain to do the math. Brunner’s proposed upgrade would track your measurements in 3-D space and send them back to your computer. It’s a combination of a time-tested tool and today’s high-tech smarts.

Smartphones and tablets have been an impressive canvas for these technologies—sensors that let devices orient themselves in space, wireless radios that let them dump information to other machines, and more—but as Brunner sees it, the next step is incorporating all this into form factors we’re already familiar with. “It’s kind of a pendulum swing,” he says. “When you’re on one end you long for the other.”

New categories require new interactions

If anyone’s qualified to talk about the burgeoning category of wearable computing, it’s Brunner. His studio’s Beats by Dre headphones have been worn more than just about any other consumer electronics product in the last half decade. But as he sees it, this new space doesn’t need designers to repackage smartphone-era thinking so much as invent new types of interactions altogether.

Today’s smartphones can indeed do it all, but how much of it can they do well?

To offer a sense of what that might look like, Brunner and his team created a concept wearable with some unique ideas for both input and output. In terms of controlling the device, a ring of sensors on the inside of the band could detect tendons in the wearer’s wrist, allowing for it to be controlled in part with some physical gestures. As for the display, instead of shrinking a smartphone screen down to something the size of a watch face, Brunner and company overlaid a flexible display with a laser cut leather band, effectively making the entire thing a stylish, pointillist screen.

The super-size screen was born out of his experience with some of the existing smartwatches that try to pipe notifications through a minuscule display. “I had to get it a foot in front of my face,” he says of his experience trying one of the existing products. “A watch is something you rotate, you glance at it, and you move on. You do that from 18 to 24 inches away.” The lesson is simple: For a smartwatch to succeed, designers need to look at how we use watches just as much as how we use smartphones.

Driving people back to the real world

Another problem Brunner has with our ubiquitous pocketable screens is just how engrossing they are. In the span of just a few years, pulling our smartphones out of our pockets at even the briefest real world lull has become a deeply seeded reflex. “I can’t concentrate on my children for 30 or 45 minutes without looking at this device,” Brunner says. “There’s this attention deficit syndrome that’s coming through and affecting our lives.”

Brunner wonders if it’s time for designers to assume the responsibility of helping us mitigate this new addiction. It’s an idea that could take many forms. On one level, it’s simply a matter of simplifying and streamlining the amount of data our apps present to us. Brunner encourages designers and developers to “stay focused, instead of dog piling with as much information as you can possibly give.” The rise of glanceable UIs and predictive software like Google Now is in step with this thinking. It promises to help us get in, get out, and get back to the world around us.

It discourages people from getting totally lost in their devices.

But there are opportunities for other types of intervention. Ammunition designed a slip case for the iPhone that exposes only a bit of the screen, letting users get a peek at their activity while discouraging them from getting totally lost in their devices. There’s software you can download that will block the time-sucking websites you’re too weak to keep yourself from visiting, and programs that lock you into the work-related application of your choice.

Of course, the problem is that in today’s digital economy, attention is money. “These people selling devices and services want you to be staring at them all the time,” he says. “That’s their goal.”

Still, it’s fun to think of a world where the most addicting software will help you realize just how addicting it is. “It would be nice if it could tell you, ‘Did you realize you looked at your Facebook page 57 times today?'” Brunner says. “I think there’s opportunity there. The first step in any self-help program is awareness of the problem.”

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All of these ideas share a general thrust. They assume that the pendulum will swing away from the Swiss Army Knife mentality of the smartphone age. “I think there’s a narrowing that has to take place,” Brunner says—a narrowing in terms of functionality, of purpose, of bandwidth demanded. Half a decade ago, the idea that you could pack a phone, an MP3 player, and an internet communicator into a single device was amazing in and of itself. At this point, the challenge is figuring out how to build the best phone, the best MP3 player, and the best internet communicator. That might mean a well-considered app; it might mean a more focused standalone device. The trend towards consolidation might seem inevitable, but decoupling isn’t an impossibility. Consider the niche e-readers have carved out even as tablets have exploded around them.

To explain where he thinks we are with mobile today, Brunner likes to use plumbing. At first, the sheer fact that there was running water in the house was enough to keep people happy. Eventually though, as we became accustomed to that luxury, people started paying attention to the temperature of the water, the rate it was dispensed, what the faucet looked like and how easy it was to operate. That’s the inflection point Brunner thinks we’re reaching with smartphones. The fact that they do it all is ceasing to be as magical as it was back in 2009. “What’s really driving things now is the experience,” Brunner says. “And that’s a lot harder to do.”